Ah, In this case it was an "Emergency Onsite" call (read: I needed to be there at a time that wasn't normally scheduled) so while the invoice itself shows only a medium amount of detail and 1hr, they did get a follow-on e-mail with a lot of detail describing the date/time/duration I was onsite, what the cause and resolutions were. I figure if I'm billing them 1.5x my normal onsite rate they deserve to know why (and yet, these guys have been a client long enough they wouldn't care if I sent them this or not).
Normally the clients only see my actual onsite and remote work times, and the invoices refer to HelpDesk ticket # and their titles. If I close more than 5 tickets (rare that that many are backlogged for a single invoice) I will simply list the ticket #'s, and I do create tickets myself for "Sysadmin-y" stuff. Well...most of them :) I'm middle of the road when it comes to accounting detail. Enough detail to bring together for an accounting audit, but not organized the way it would be if I was accounting slanted, if that makes sense. An example, for any visit that requires travel I will always have an separate invoice for that because at the end of the year I simply add up the invoices containing the word "onsite" and then I know how many miles I have driven for that particular client. Remote work on the same day goes on the same invoice, but if I ever needed to drive to a client twice in one day (haven't done so in 11 years) I would generate two invoices. While this method breaks my usual "make sure it scales" thinking, I know I can always revisit this. Hasn't been an issue in 11 years and have to spend less than an hour/week on accounting and administration. With only three regular clients and all of them "loving" me (they have never ever questioned an invoice, or work, or anything, but I am always prepared for it), I largely have free reign. While I can't appreciably increase my income from year to year, there's always enough "open work" (usually fine-tuning AD/GPO settings and documentation, etc) that I can work and extra hour or three on any given month and it wouldn't be questioned. The peace of mind of steady income is unbeatable, add to that that 99% of the time my suggestions for upgrades/improvements/changes get approved makes it even sweeter. Sorry veered a little OT....first time that's happened on this list EVER, LOL. Dave From: Jonathan Link [mailto:jonathan.l...@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2011 8:37 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: SMB Billing (wasRe: Hyper-V VM's and unnecessary heart failure) No, not like that. Do you note that you took 4 hours and then write down the amount to be equal to an hour? Or do your customers see only one hour? Or do they see that 4 hours in this instance cost X where X is equal to your hourly rate? I'm curious, mainly because of your use of terminology, but it's also a philosophy from what I've observed with where I work. An accounting firm. We show a bill with the full amount of the work that was performed (what we charge) and what the charge is, and then we may write down amounts and provide reasons for that. At the computer company I worked for before (long time ago) they just charged whatever amount including writedowns without detail, because they weren't accounting focused. I now do this for the few garage clients I have. I've noticed a steady uptick in revenue with this change. I'm less inclined to writedown an invoice, and customers are less inclined to argue about it, because they know my rates are X, and they know I spent X hours there. On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 11:07 AM, David Lum <david....@nwea.org<mailto:david....@nwea.org>> wrote: I use something obsolete called Microsoft Small Business Accounting 2008 (MS's idea to compete with Quickbooks that didn't pan out, I have it only because it came packaged with other stuff). I export the invoice to Word and fire it off to my clients... Is that what you mean? Dave From: Jonathan Link [mailto:jonathan.l...@gmail.com<mailto:jonathan.l...@gmail.com>] Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2011 7:56 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Hyper-V VM's and unnecessary heart failure Totally changing the subject, based on your comment about charging... How do you write your bills? On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 10:50 AM, David Lum <david....@nwea.org<mailto:david....@nwea.org>> wrote: I charged for one hour even though I was there for *four* :). But yes it's both preventable or worst case easily remedied in the future. Interesting to note that it's not just Hyper-V! Dave From: John Hornbuckle [mailto:john.hornbuc...@taylor.k12.fl.us<mailto:john.hornbuc...@taylor.k12.fl.us>] Sent: Monday, October 31, 2011 5:56 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Hyper-V VM's and unnecessary heart failure I'm not sure I'd have felt guilty for charging them for the full hour. This seems like a rather obscure issue-not the type of thing you'd have been expected to know (if the latter, then I definitely wouldn't charge). Of course, the next time this happens the client (whoever that client may be) will benefit since you'll be armed with the extra knowledge. :) John Hornbuckle, MSMIS, PMP MIS Department Taylor County School District www.taylor.k12.fl.us<http://www.taylor.k12.fl.us> From: David Lum [mailto:david....@nwea.org]<mailto:[mailto:david....@nwea.org]> Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2011 2:31 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Hyper-V VM's and unnecessary heart failure Remotely working on a %nightjob% client tonight, both a VM and corresponding host unexpectedly drop my LogMeIn connection. I see from LogMeIn that other systems in that room are online, so I know it wasn't the circuit that dropped. Oh joy, I get to drive in (thankfully a short 20 min drive). I get onsite and the host server is halted at the POST screen for the eSATA RAID controller, and the eSATA RAID controller reports a degraded disk on one of the two volumes. Power everything off, pull the drives, disconnect/reconnect the cables, etc. Power it back up and everything shows good. So the host comes up (YAY ½ way there! Well...) and I log in and watch for the VM to start...it gets to 50% then stops, and after 15 minutes (and you know how long 15 minutes is when you're waiting for a *VERY* critical server to come up don'tcha?) the VM goes back to "stopped". As I do full volume backups nightly to the eSATA I'm not too worried yet, but even recovering to that this client would lose a day of work (Internet backups start at 7pm, servers went offline at 5:13pm). A cursory look at the event logs shows nothing exciting, so I change the VM "autostart" from 60 seconds after host OS to 500 seconds and then reboot the host. No change. Joy. Thinking maybe it's an issue on the host I pull a two week old DISK2VHD file that was handier than the backups, I create a new VM on the host and use this VHD. That VM fires up just fine, but it makes me wonder if I can just create a new VM and point to the existing disk files for this critical server. I file that away for plan B. I hit the event logs again, I went through both system and app logs for the timeframe including 30 mins on either side of the start failures (and you know I tried to start that VM more than just those two times...). Somehow I stumbled upon one of Windows 2008's 1 zillion new logs, under Windows logs\Applicaitons and Services logs\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V Worker and I found my golden nugget: Log Name: Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-Worker-Admin Source: Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-Worker Date: 10/28/2011 7:02:45 PM Event ID: 12140 Task Category: None Level: Error Keywords: User: NETWORK SERVICE Computer: Host4.thehosed.one.local Description: 'thehosed.one': Failed to open attachment '\\192.168.116.249\Inst-server\Windows 2008 R2\SW_DVD5_Windows_Svr_DC_EE_SE_Web_2008R2_64-bit_English_X15-59754.ISO'. Error: 'The specified network name is no longer available.' (0x80070040). (Virtual machine 97527135-A765-4700-AF66-C6FE2143391D) Event Xml: Google-Fu then returned a thread to me where someone else was having the same issue because about a VM not starting and it turned out to be a CD-ROM driver issue. Was the VM was failing to start because I had the CD-ROM mapped to a network location that was no longer valid? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Go into VM settings, remove the CD-ROM from the config and boot the VM. Presto! Took me just over four hours to find the necessary 2-second config change... I charge 1.5x my normal hourly rate to break my routine and drive onsite, somehow I think just one hour is fairhere - sometimes the lesson and the relief that there was zero data loss for the client is reward enough! David Lum Systems Engineer // NWEATM Office 503.548.5229<tel:503.548.5229> // Cell (voice/text) 503.267.9764<tel:503.267.9764> ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com<mailto:listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com<mailto:listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com<mailto:listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com<mailto:listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com<mailto:listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com<mailto:listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com<mailto:listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
